Star Force 10: Outcast

by B. V. Larson

  “We’re running low on energy,” Hansen said, his hands still gripped the controls tightly. “The shield is a power hog.”

  I looked at the graphs and saw he was right.

  “Will we have enough?” I asked.

  “Not if we keep the shield up.”

  I hesitated for a moment, unwilling to open Valiant up to any more damage. “Adrienne,” I called, “can the marine battlesuits be plugged in to the ship’s power grid?”

  “We can’t spare the energy right now,” she replied.

  “No, no, I mean, can we draw power from their suit generators? They must still be fairly well-charged.”

  “I think so. Just have the marines put their suits back into their receptacles and I’ll try to set it up.”

  “Will do. Ask Sakura for help if you have to,” I said. “We need that power or we’ll have to turn off the shield, and if we do that, we’ll start taking laser fire again.”

  “Okay, Cody, I’m on it.”

  “Thanks, Adie. Cody out.” A warm glow suffused me. Here I was in the middle of a battle and the most important thing to me was that I was back in her good graces, and using first names. Funny, but that very feeling prevented me from thinking what a hypocrite I was.

  I called Gunnery Sergeant Taksin and told him to put the battlesuits back into their charging stations and to wait for instructions from the engineers in case reversing the energy flow needed some kind of manual override. Then I slipped down to Medical to check on Kwon. The idiot was arguing with the med bay, trying to get it to let him out, even with both legs gone above the knees. I had to order him twice to stay put, yelling at him. Finally, I told the med bay brainbox to sedate him for at least eight hours. Then I returned to the bridge.

  “We’re getting close to bingo,” Hansen said. “Bingo” was pilot talk for just enough fuel—or in this case energy—to get home and land.

  “I’ll shut off the shield if I have to,” I said, finger on the control. I was just about to power it down and suffer the laser fire when the energy reserves stabilized and then began to slowly climb.

  “Yes!” I cheered. “The suits did the trick. The generators are small, but there are twenty of them in the charging docks.” I realized several bridge crew were looking at me with something like shock. I didn’t think it was any big deal, but then again, it had been a clever idea.

  Hansen shot me a raised-eyebrow look, the only attention he was willing to spare. Somehow I had the feeling he didn’t share the crew’s enthusiasm.

  The ice moon started to loom on the screen as seen through a rear camera and partially obscured by the blazing flare of the main engines that braked us. I tried to set up a landing calculation but I wasn’t familiar enough with the standard controls. I’d gotten spoiled by the holotank, and resolved to refresh my training on the backups ASAP.

  So this time, I cheated.

  “Valiant, what is our landing profile?”

  “Landing profile is within safety parameters,” the brainbox replied. “Landing surface is liquid. Liquid landing protocols have been implemented.”

  That eased my mind somewhat. Of course, Star Force ships had standardized protocols for water landings. Some planets had almost no land, and since any spaceship was sealed against vacuum anyway, it wasn’t that hard to design a hull to keep water out as well as air in.

  “Will we have hull integrity?” I asked the ship.

  “Hull integrity safety protocols have been overridden by the chief engineer.”

  That didn’t sound good, but I had to trust that Sakura knew what she was doing. “Given current damage, how much pressure can we take?” I asked.

  “Approximately 10.34 bar,” said the ship.

  “About 150 PSI,” I mused. “How deep is that in feet?”

  “Approximately five hundred and four.”

  I was pretty good at quick calculations in my head, and that didn’t sound right. Then I remembered that the lower gravity of the moon meant the water pressure would increase much more slowly as we descended. “How deep is the sea floor?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Use active radar to try to get a reading.”

  “Not recommended. Magnetic shield is in place.”

  Damn. I remembered we hadn’t been able to ping the moon, and I hadn’t thought to do it on the way in. Marvin would have done it, I was sure, and then I laughed at myself for missing the crazy robot. He did have his uses. I guessed we would just have to hope the sea was deep enough to hide us, and the sea floor not so far down we couldn’t take the pressure. Otherwise, we might have to cruise around like a submarine, looking for a shallower spot.

  “How long until splashdown?” I asked Valiant.

  “Two minutes ten seconds at the mark: Mark.”

  “Okay. Count down the last ten seconds.”

  “Command accepted.”

  We sweated the last two minutes. The Litho fighters broke off about ninety seconds from impact, rocketing sideways to skim above the moon’s surface, a rather brave act for them, considering their apparent hatred for cold and wet. Once they had turned away, I shut off the shield and was pleased to see the capacitors refilling fast.

  One minute from impact, I told the crew to cease repair activities and brace themselves—despite the readouts that said we would land rather than crash onto the surface. Whatever can go wrong, will, was a good maxim to live by, and we’d already lost several people today despite our desperate efforts. I’d feel pretty damned stupid if someone else died because I became complacent now.

  Everyone held on and wrapped up in restraints as the brainbox droned the countdown. When we reached zero, I expected to feel something significant, but almost nothing occurred. Hansen had shut down the main engines and now lowered us gently on repellers. Moments later we sank slowly below the ripples of the frigid ocean.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, which was echoed by everyone within earshot.

  We were down in an ocean full of icebergs—safe, for the moment.

  -24-

  The hull groaned around us as we descended to one hundred feet. The frigid waters of the moon’s ocean closed overhead, and the external view transitioned from slate gray to black. It was an odd feeling, sinking into an alien sea. I doubted that any living creature had ever done so in these waters before. One could not help but wonder what we’d find in the inky depths.

  “Take us obliquely northward,” I told Hansen while we all stared at the gurgling black seas outside. “I want to get under the ice. The Lithos may be able to track us until we get deep enough.”

  Navigating with sonar that Sakura had cleverly rigged up, Valiant slid slowly and carefully northward. I knew that we still had some danger with hull breaches and that water had flooded some outer compartments, but our nanite-thickened pressure doors and bulkheads had held most of it back.

  I contacted Sakura. “Report any pressure problems to the bridge,” I told her. “I’d rather not surface, but I like the idea of drowning even less. Oh, and send a technician up here to get the holotank working.”

  “I’ll do that,” she replied. “We should be good down to four or five hundred feet, sir.”

  “Thanks.” I closed the channel. “Hansen, take us down slowly, pausing every hundred. I’m not as confident about our hull integrity as our chief engineer.”

  A tech showed up and within half an hour she had the holotank functioning again, which was a great relief for me. Soon the display built a three-dimensional picture of our surroundings.

  “The sea floor is down around two thousand feet,” I said. “Too deep.”

  Hansen grunted. His manner was ambiguous.

  “Something bothering you?” I asked.

  “How well do lasers work under water?”

  That stumped me, so I called Sakura again and put the question to her.

  “The mechanisms will function fine,” she told me, “but the range will be very short—a hundred yards or less unless the water is exceptionally clear. Even the
n, the range will be a quarter mile at most. And the effects will be different. If there is a lot of particulate matter in the water, most of the heat will dump into the liquid itself, flash-boiling it. In that case, our laser batteries will be steam-throwers.”

  “Thanks,” I told her.

  I turned back to Hansen, who’d been listening to the exchange. “Does that answer your question?” I asked him.

  He tossed me a wry glance. “You might want to check your holotank.”

  I raised an eyebrow and turned to look. Well in front of us, perhaps twenty miles away at the limit of sonar range, I could see a group of contacts. As we got closer, I saw they were shaped like most swimming sea creatures. They resembled whales in size, ranging from fifty to two hundred feet long. Now I wished we had worked harder on a full set of undersea sensors.

  “So there’s life on this moon,” I said. “Fairly complex life, too. I wonder how intelligent they are?”

  The whales sped toward us at thirty miles per hour. As our own rate of travel was about the same, every minute brought us a mile closer together. About ten miles away, they stopped advancing and turned to their left, circling us and keeping their distance.

  Suddenly the door to the bridge opened and Hoon barged in, wearing his pressure suit, of course. His low-slung, oversized body made the area feel suddenly crowded, and his claws waved in the air showing he was agitated.

  “Step aside, Captain. I must have direct access to the best sensors available to observe these creatures.”

  I stared at the lobster. “How did you even know we’d seen anything?”

  “The previous captain provided my quarters with a continuous feed of ship sensors, but I cannot control them,” he replied. “Now please, let me see.”

  As he’d said “please,” I got out of his way and let him access one of the unused sensor stations. He kept one eyestalk pointed at the holotank and one at the console, reminding me of Marvin. With surprisingly deft fingerlike digits on his mandible, he tapped at the controls, bringing up a bunch of data incomprehensible to me.

  As I watched him, I realized I should have thought to bring Hoon to the bridge right away. As a scientist and a water creature, he would naturally know how to get the most out of our systems in this environment.

  “These sensors are pathetic,” Hoon said. “We must manufacture and configure a better suite.”

  “I agree wholeheartedly,” I said. “Just as soon as we find a safe spot on the sea floor to set down and begin mining for raw materials, you can start working with Adrienne and Sakura on that.” I figured that should motivate him.

  “I will find such a place. You air-breathers will doubtlessly perform sub-optimally and will require a great deal of assistance.”

  “Absolutely. I expect you to humble us with your display of knowledge and undersea expertise. In fact, I bet you could write a paper on this moon for your colleagues to marvel over when we get back to known space.”

  “You continue to impress me, young Riggs, with your perspicacity and insight, if not your raw intellect. For a child, you show promise.”

  “Thanks, Grandpa.” I rolled my eyes and noticed Hansen smiling. “Now, what do you think about these whales?”

  “If you mean the swimmers circling us, I believe we could find out more if you reduced the power on the active sonar. If they can detect sounds, the pings are probably extremely loud, thus keeping them at bay.”

  “Good idea.” I cut the sonar power in half. Immediately, the whales began edging inward as they circled around to our starboard. “It looks like you were right.”

  “Of course I’m right,” Hoon snapped. “Please further reduce the sonar emissions.”

  I cut the strength of the sonar to minimum, giving us a mere quarter mile of range, enough to see the sea floor and avoid hitting anything. The whales continued to approach until they got within two hundred yards.

  “Give me visuals,” I said.

  “It’s too dark,” Hansen replied.

  “Then turn on the lights.”

  Hoon said, “Your lasers can be used in low-power diffused mode to provide illumination.”

  “Let’s see, then.”

  On the main screen, a murky picture emerged. We were encircled by stately swimming shapes. I was already calling them whales, and in this case form followed function. They looked like whales for the most part, except for having four eyes equally spaced around their heads. This optical arrangement allowed them to see forward and probably well to the side. They displayed a cluster of tentacles near what looked like a mouth in front.

  “These are not true hunting creatures,” Hoon said, “but this sea clearly contains predators.”

  “How do you know?” I asked, genuinely interested.

  “It is elementary. The tentacles are too small to grasp large prey, but are similar to many creatures of your planet and ours, serving to sweep plankton, krill or plant matter into the maw for digestion. This indicates these creatures aren’t predators. However, their optical organs are placed in an optimal arrangement to see attackers. Swimming predators tend to have closer, more forward-set eyes for binocular vision, the better to hunt and strike. Since these creatures have banded together for mutual protection, they’re displaying classic physical and behavioral traits which indicate predators must be present in the ecosystem.”

  Hoon was now in his element, and he proceeded to lecture us on sea life in general. The most important thing I gleaned from him was that this moon must contain a thriving ecosystem to support something as large as these whales. He inferred a whole pyramid of species based merely on his observations of this one. Despite myself, I was impressed.

  I stopped listening to Hoon after a while and began thinking of the implications. We were going to have to deal with a living world we barely understood. It could be fraught with dangers, even if none of the local life was sentient. These whales seemed to be bigger than the largest Earth species. Maybe there were larger creatures still to be discovered. Perhaps the predators Hoon predicted were leviathans. I suspected my marines might get a workout on this moon after all.

  As we proceeded northward, the whales paced us like dolphins following a seafaring ship on Earth. I took this as a good sign: if the local herd-creatures were calm, no dangerous beasts were likely to be near.

  “We really need more sonar power if we’re going to search much of the area,” Hansen said when Hoon finally paused.

  “An excellent suggestion,” Hoon responded. “Give me control of the sonar and I will gradually increase its power and attempt to tune its frequency to minimally impact the local life.”

  I saw no reason to deny Hoon his toys, so I instructed Hansen to turn over all sensor control to the lobster and to take search suggestions from him. I needed to take a look at the damage below decks and show my face among the crew.

  My first stop was the medical bay. I made sure Kwon was still sedated. Next I stopped by the cramped marine spaces with their triple bunks, battlesuits standing in alcoves. Some people were working on damage control, but many were off duty. I was glad to see Gunnery Sergeant Taksin resting his troops in rotation and not just burning them out. I told them Kwon would be fine. It would take more than losing a few limbs to keep him down. I also gave them my condolences for the marines we’d lost today.

  I shook hands and praised them for their work, calling them “Riggs’ Pigs” whenever I could. Napoleon once said, “The moral,” —from which we got our word morale— “is to the physical as three is to one,” so I dispensed as much morale as I could, promising them lots of hard work and beer as soon as we got the factory working on soft goods again. I also mentioned that this sea held life, probably dangerous life, and the marines’ contribution to our survival would continue to be vital. My visit seemed to cheer them up.

  Next I toured the perimeter, looking in on the crew while they worked hard with tools and nanite guides to fix the hull. Employing a combination of constructive nanites and manufactured parts, the
repairs were progressing, albeit slowly. We’d dumped so much of the ship’s mass there wasn’t enough metal and raw materials to utilize for repairing bulkheads. We were short many vital resources, but the crew was on the job and I did as much back-patting and praising as I could stand. Leadership by wandering around, Dad had called it, getting out and being seen to care.

  My real destination was Engineering, which resided near the center and stern of the ship, mostly comprising the big factory space and the engine room. There I found Adrienne sitting at the factory console with a frown of concentration on her face while Sakura stood across the room in front of the big control wall. On-duty marines in battlesuits, their helmets off, carried chunks of debris and fed them into the factory intake.

  I noticed one marine carrying a boulder-sized crystal in his hands, and I moved to stop him.

  “Is that a piece of Litho?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir!” he said.

  “Is that safe?”

  “Warrant Officer Sakura said so, sir!”

  I frowned, finding it odd that we should be grinding up dead enemies to build our own ship components. Wasn’t this akin to using the bones of a dead man to build a house? The thought was troubling, but we did need the raw materials. The situation made me realize how difficult coming to some kind of peaceful coexistence with the Lithos was going to be. We were so utterly different; we were going to find it hard to find common ground and understanding.

  “Carry on,” I said, letting the marine work. I moved over to Adrienne’s post. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine, but we don’t have enough materials.”

  “You’ll have all you can handle as soon as we set down. Are you quite sure it’s appropriate—or even safe—to feed Litho bodies into the factory?”

  Adrienne frowned. “Safe? Yes, it’s safe. Don’t trust me?”

  “Trust but verify is something commanders have to do,” I said. “You’re in charge here, and I bet you don’t just assume everyone thinks of everything, do you?”

  She laughed. “Okay. Fair point. I check on everyone all the time to the point where they become annoyed with me. About the Lithos, Sakura and the scientists ran some tests when we first got samples back in the hollow planet, and she determined that our metal nanites could easily process the silico-nanites inside the material. They are only a little more virulent than living fungus or bacteria. They’re not some super-germ. In fact, our own metal nanites are far more dangerous. I’ve always wondered what would happen if they became self-aware. They’d be hard to stop.”